What is it with people refusing to vaccinate their children in this modern day and age? People have concerns, yes, but it seems like a lot of them refuse to listen to doctors and scientists and instead trust weird stuff they read on the internet, much of it not even related to any actual studies. Not vaccinating your children is dangerous, period. The diseases they or other kids who can’t get vaccines (like those with immune system deficiencies) can contract are serious and sometimes fatal. And all of this could be avoided if parents would just listen to the experts and vaccinate their children.

Recent high school graduate and Twitter user Taylor Sharp recently wrote a whole thread on Twitter, laying out the facts about vaccines and illustrating the problems with main anti-vaxxer arguments (like autism). And to keep it interesting to those who might otherwise be bored, she added cute gifs to emphasize her points.

A THREAD: i actually did my senior paper on vaccinations so let me hit you with the facts real quick

although these diseases are rare, and some are even erased from the U.S. completely, they are still present all around the world and can be brought back into the country, leaving unvaccinated children at risk pic.twitter.com/5l0NsUkMOS

another dangerous disease that is making a return, is measles. measles is a virus that causes a rash, inflamed eyes, very high fever, and it is extremely contagious. if someone comes in contact with measles and they are unvaccinated, there is a 90% chance they will become sick pic.twitter.com/es9JTa2iXK

however since there are clusters of vaccine refusals this is creating “hot spots” in communities where herd immunity against vaccine preventable disease is compromised, and outbreaks occur pic.twitter.com/DhMPgtAPUH

say a boy has leukemia, so he cant get any vaccines. theres also a girl whose parents dont vaccinate her, then the girl contracts measles. her body can fight off the infection, but when the boy contracts it, he has a very high chance of dying bc of his weakened immune system pic.twitter.com/4bTkWWa9zT

just like a herd of animals will form a protective circle around its most vulnerable members, it is important for people to form a healthy ring around those whose immune systems prevent them from getting their shots pic.twitter.com/SF6OuvHSSi

vaccines dont cause autism dont even come at me with that dumb shit. there is no “cause” of autism. you cant give someone autism, it is a mental disability that they are born with pic.twitter.com/PYJxgwECle

the possibility of a decreased risk was strongest for the MMR vaccine, with an odds ratio of 0.84. that is a 16% risk reduction. so, if anything, vaccine ingredients may in fact decrease the risk pic.twitter.com/haxXwbwKIS

She addresses people’s worry over what they consider to be harmful ingredients in vaccines.

there are ingredients that stir up controversy such as mercury, thimerosal, aluminum, formaldehyde, etc. the type of mercury found in thimerosal, ethylmercury, is different from methylmercury, the type commonly found in fish and is known to be harmful in large amounts pic.twitter.com/MjYdGt6NXF

today no vaccines contain thimerosal except the influenza vaccine but there are thimerosal-free alternatives in replacement. these chemicals are added to the vaccines to inactivate a virus or bacteria and stabilize the vaccine to preserve and prevent it from losing its strength pic.twitter.com/cNyZ3VEj9l

the chemical formaldehyde is always present in the human body as part of the natural metabolic process. as a matter of fact, there is 50 to 70 times more formaldehyde in an average newborn’s body, than in a single dose of vaccine pic.twitter.com/s67XkzZAgX

aluminum is a common fear that people share. but many of them do not know that a breast fed infant will naturally ingest around 7 milligrams of aluminum in their diet throughout the first six months of their life pic.twitter.com/92sjFiNudP

the United States has the safest vaccine supply in its history. choosing not to vaccinate kids, could have the potential to be more dangerous than just receiving the vaccine in the first place pic.twitter.com/JBE6V13J9Z

Another person claimed that Sharp couldn’t possibly be an expert on the safety of vaccines since she had only just graduated high school.

Writing a paper in college by no means makes you an expert…. I wrote my senior paper on artificial intelligence, and yet Google hasn’t called me once for advice on their AI systems…. Maybe I’ll add “wrote an essay” on my resume and then I’ll be considered for a position.

Congrats on your HS diploma! Maybe you can help CHOP do the math on childhood exposures to aluminum from vaccines and diet. They have that backwards, per bodyweight and absorption rate (0.03% ingested, 100% injected). C Fig 1 #alum). Also, dietary aluminum <> vaccine aluminum.

And if you look at the outbreaks, they usually happen in VACCINATED people – why? Because vaccines don’t work. It’s a synthetic virus (body doesn’t respond the same) and it’s injected BYPASSING the immune system. Lots of case reports on this page: https://t.co/7x2q24fhig

And still more people doubted the veracity of research, claiming that vaccines actually kill children and chastising a student for thinking she knows more than “the experts.”

You showed only one side; that is only half the job. There are thousands of children who die each year bec of vaccinations. Many are Black and Brown. Let the drug companies invent cures for malaria and leprosy: measles we can handle. @JohnsHopkinsSPH Health

So, are you going to take full responsibility for those who die or are harmed by vaccines? Vaccines that never eradicated these diseases in the first place because you’re promoting something that’s harming and killing. you going on record quoting that vaccines don’t killorharm?

I love you, you are amazing. Add in rotavirus and flu and you have all the preventable baby stuff, then Neisseria meningitides, Men B, HPV for teens. And some others that aren’t common in the US. Wanna be a doc? Pretty please?